


Pax Romana

by meowvelous



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/F, F/M, Gen, Post-Canon, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-01
Updated: 2013-02-01
Packaged: 2017-11-27 18:30:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/665114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meowvelous/pseuds/meowvelous
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What can the children of soldiers do, when born during peace time? A look at the life of Shepard and Liara’s hypothetical child. Post ME3, as such there are spoilers for the end-game.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pax Romana

**Author's Note:**

> Obligatory "better than it sounds" phrase goes here. Really, I just love the Mass Effect universe so this is closure for me. Compliant with the extended ending Bioware added/what ME wiki tells me happened (because I beat it before and after but apparently I missed some scenes? Dang). BUT! None of the ME3 dlcs because I haven't played them.
> 
> Oh, also, my FemShep had the colonist/ruthless background and she was full Paragon.

Despite their promises, plans for the future – Shepard didn’t beat death a second time. For the second time, Liara had to bury her. And, like the last time, there was no body. Only a plaque on the Normandy’s memorial, and a lump in Liara’s throat, where the familiar taste of grief sat, heavy and choking.

There were no families in her future. Liara never really wanted one. Asari families were temporary, at best, and well… Her own kind avoided her, and before everything, she kept herself secluded in the world of academia. Never allowed herself to dream that she’d meet anyone to fall in love with, not for some centuries in the future, until she met Shepard.

Shepard promised her a herd of children, in one of their joking, flirty conversations. But it was not meant to be.

Except, there was a child.

Liara was surprised by the heaviness growing in her body, and panicked, briefly. She was still young, not yet at the stage where she should have been having children. But Liara knew it was a final gift from Shepard, and that she couldn’t live with herself if she lost this one, last piece.

When the baby was born, she had Shepard’s eyes, a clearer, brighter blue than Liara’s. She was named Ilea, in honor of Ilios, their forgotten planet.

And so, as Liara helped rebuild the galaxy (not just Thessia – but Rannoch and Palavin too, yet always returning to the Normandy, her true home), she did so with a beautiful blue baby on her hip.

* * *

It was an odd thing, to grow up in a war torn galaxy, in the looming shadow of a ghost.

Ilea learned to walk on the steel plated floors of the Normandy, the geography of the universe by standing before the glowing galaxy map. Garrus taught her how to shoot, and she didn’t miss how choked his voice got when he mentioned that her ‘father’ favored sniper rifles too.

Her birthright was kept quiet; At the time, the galaxy saw Shepard as something other than human, beyond even being a hero. After all, the woman had cheated death, and saved the galaxy three times over.

Everyone knew who Shepard was, what her military record was before she became the captain of the Normandy. Fewer knew of her personal life (beyond the rumors), how empty it was after the loss of her birth family, before she was able to build a new one with her squad members. No one asked about who she loved, or what grieving loved ones she left behind.

Only the crew of the Normandy knew, and they kept it quiet and close.

Still, Ilea always knew, and grew up hearing about her father’s exploits from everyone. From the holovids and news, she learned of the legend. From her family, she learned about the woman. Sometimes it was harder to believe the latter; for example, that one of the first things Shepard bought after her rebirth was a bottle of Serrice Ice Brandy, which Shepard than drank the entirety of with Chakwas.

When her lessons finished for the day, and her time was her own, Ilea could often be found sitting crossed legged, staring thoughtfully up at the Normandy’s memorial.

* * *

No one on the Normandy ever spoke about that final battle on Earth.

It took until Ilea hit puberty at 100, and subsequently had an argument with her mom, which ended with her taking a shuttle and running away to Jon Grissom Academy (because Jack was always her favourite biotics teacher, regardless of what other people thought of the woman). Of course it didn’t take long for Liara to find her – but there was still a significant gap of time, because one couldn’t be raised by the Shadow Broker without picking up a few tricks.

The confrontation involved Ilea testing to see how long her barriers can last, having inherited Shepard’s stubbornness, refusing to take them down and go back to the Normandy until Liara promised to tell her about it.

* * *

They sat cross-legged, facing each other in Liara’s room-slash-office.

It was dim, for once not lit by the many glowing screens of her information terminal. All were off, and blank, which momentarily awed Ilea. Such a thing happened rarely, and it was difficult to remember the last time it happened, if indeed such a thing had ever occurred.

Naturally, Ilea knew that somewhere, several sub-programs were running, catching streams of information for her mother’s later perusal. But, at that moment, Liara had stopped, and set aside her mantle of the Shadow Broker in order to talk to her daughter.

Liara’s voice was soft and subdued, almost difficult to catch over the distant hum of the Normandy’s inner workings. She spoke of the war, how the signs had been present and ignored for years. How much fighting they had already done, before the conflict had even begun.

Familiar events from history class were rehashed; Earth, Palavin, Tuchanka, Thessia. But there were things that the textbooks weren't allowed to mention.

How their kind was contorted into a screeching, deadly monster known as Banshees. How many of those monsters that Liara herself had fought and killed, and on several occasions, nearly had been killed by. How other species hadn’t escaped the mutations either, and that soldiers often ended up fighting lost loved ones, without even realizing it.

Finally, Liara spoke of the final battle on Earth.

Her voice broke, only once, when describing how Shepard set out alone, to the Citadel. There were tears in her voice, and sliding down her cheeks, as Liara told Ilea that her father died, alone, sacrificing her life to finally end the millennia old conflict.

Ilea hugged her then, Liara returning the embrace, as they cried together and grieved for one long gone.

* * *

Sometimes, when Ilea allowed herself think about it, she was bitter.

She could have had a family (beyond the rag-tag crew of the Normandy, clinging to each other and glaring at the Alliance, just daring them to take the ship back, to deport the aliens after all they did for everyone), and more importantly, could have had her mother without grief sitting as shadows beneath her eyes.

Sometimes, Ilea dreamed.

She stands on a long corridor, space on either side, with three paths leading to various techniques of self-destruction, and there stands her father, looking the way that everyone told her, with a few embellishments based on her own imagination (based off what they didn’t tell her, but what she figured out – how under a reaper’s beam, armor would crack and char and melt to mold to skin).

Ilea can’t remember her own words; just that she hurls accusations with the precision of grenades. Fragments get through, generic and vague; what, why, how.

And through it all, her father watches her, with the same eyes that Ilea sees in the mirror. She’s smiling, despite the strands of hair coated with blood and clinging to her cheeks, despite the oozing and cauterized wounds. Finally, when Ilea pauses to take ragged breaths, Shepard spreads her arms to encompass the entire universe, taking the stance of one about to throw themselves off a tall building. _I gave you the world, the universe, to live in._

_So, live._

* * *

Despite her multi-cultural upbringing, when Ilea grew older and her loved ones started dying, she didn’t take it well.

It’s the burden of their kind, her mom told her, the sadness in her features all too familiar. They are long lived, as few species are. Most, humans and turians and quarians, only live a small fraction of the asari life-span. It is their burden to bury the families they find.

Chakwas was the first to go. Joker, much later, was even harder since EDI didn’t understand why it happened. Jack’s death was somehow impossibly worse, since Ilea always secretly wished Jack was her father. Eventually, Tali passed and Garrus followed soon – too soon— after.

Just like that, her family was gone, except for her mother and EDI. Suddenly, the Normandy needed a new crew.

Instead of clinging tighter and staying close, Ilea ran, leaving a message that blocked her mother’s search protocols, simply asking her to let Ilea make her own choices. Or, mistakes, if they indeed were to be bad choices. It wasn’t as if the two of them were lacking in time, or that it wasn’t unusual for the asari to reconnect with relatives they hadn’t seen for centuries.

* * *

Every asari has a mental checklist, from being told how their species behaves, rather than making a conscious decision to do so.

Illea danced, and tried to get a job as an apprentice to the consort at the citadel. That took her uncomfortably close to her parent’s world, and so Ilea quickly abandoned it. She went to Omega and met Aria, and ran with some mercenaries before deciding the entire thing was stupid.

Finally, without really meaning to, Ilea joined the reconstruction project. A century old, and yet there was still so much to be done. Even then, there was an itch between her shoulder blades, a small voice whispering to her in the night. _You can do so much better. There is more to life than this._

But what the thing was, Ilea couldn’t say.

* * *

Finally, Ilea decided to find out.

She bought a ship (she was never lacking in funds; her mom raised her to be minimalist, Garrus trained her to converse ammo and to loot refills from bodies). Not as big or as beautiful as the Normandy, but a start. Small, with enough room for eight cabins, a kitchen, a small mess, a med bay, and a spacious cargo bay.

It took a long time to find a crew, enough that she set up residence for a time in the port colony where she bought the ship. Ilea was wary of non-asari, until a mental voice that sounded very much like her mom pointed out that her own DNA wasn’t pure, that those she had loved best were a different species.

The pilot was a human that got hired because Ilea thought she was cute, and Ilea found a quarian on his pilgrimage (a distant cousin, several times removed, of Tali’s) for a mechanic. A turian, who kinda reminded her of Garrus, and a fierce but composed female Krogan to serve as backup in combat. The last to be hired was a salarian with a perchance for weapon mods, and an affinity for medicine.

All spoke of the same wanderlust that Ilea felt, a symptom of their generation, who'd been raised in a peace more secure than any before it. What can one do, when everything has already been done?

They set out, to find the answer.

* * *

After her mom died, the universe felt much emptier

Her crew circulated, the positions taking longer to fill as the prestige around her ship, the Romana, grew. Ilea loved, and lost, taking each with a little more grace.

She still wasn’t sure what to do, only that she must. Ilea inherited a safe universe within which to live. There wasn’t much of a threat to protect anyone from, besides the mundanities of wildlife or fauna or mercenaries.

And so, the only torch Ilea carried was that of her own life. It served as a reminder of the shadows she grew up in, those cast by both her parents. Her family history sat heavily on her shoulders, growing more burdensome as those around her forgot the people but remembered the legends.

So Ilea lived, and remembered, and tried to ensure that the lives and deaths of her parents were for something.

**Author's Note:**

> So what I’m saying is Firefly/Serenity should be what happens after ME3.
> 
> The present tense during the dream sequence is intentional, but if my tenses slipped anywhere else, cheers if you point it out. This isn't beta'd, just looked over by myself a few times.


End file.
